Date of Award

1-1-2014

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of History

Content Description

1 online resource (iii, 169 pages)

Dissertation/Thesis Chair

John Monfasani

Committee Members

Warren Roberts, Martha Rozett

Keywords

Aristotle, Elizabethan, England, ethics, Renaissance, Shakespeare, Literature, Philosophy, English

Subject Categories

European History

Abstract

From the twelfth century well into the seventeenth century, Aristotelianism was the dominant philosophical system in Europe, and William Shakespeare's life and professional career coincided with a broad and significant revival of interest in Aristotelianism in Elizabethan England. Shakespeare responded to this intellectual movement, and in Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, and Timon of Athens, he demonstrates a highly sophisticated, comprehensive understanding of Aristotelian moral philosophy which, I argue, he gained by reading John Case's Speculum quaestionum moralium (1585), the standard Elizabethan commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. William Shakespeare, the man who over the centuries has become all things to all people, is the world's most famous yet least recognized proponent of Renaissance Aristotelianism.

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